


To Get Him Back

by Sitatu



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, F/M, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, I will add more tags as I add chapters, M/M, Pining, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Steve Rogers is pretty dense, Time Travel, because i don't like spoilers, i will let you know which when the time has come, this story is articulated around a scene from a tv series
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-17 13:54:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29967363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sitatu/pseuds/Sitatu
Summary: “I saw Peggy when I went back in time to retrieve the Tesseract. I know where and when to find her.”Bucky's heart broke. “You're leaving me!” he accused his friend. “That's why you volunteered to bring back each stone where and when it belongs! You're not planning on coming back!”When Steve tells Bucky he'll be staying in the past, he breaks Bucky's heart.Can Bucky be happy without Steve?What can he do to put back together the pieces of his broken heart?
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	1. Bucky

**Author's Note:**

> Stucky Avengers End Game fix-it fic  
> This fanfiction was inspired by a TV series, I will let you know which one when the time has come  
> The story starts after Tony's death but before his funeral  
> The chapters are short and there will be about ten of them  
> English is not my native language, therefore if you see any grammatical mistake, typo or awkward phrasing, please let me know

“I saw her,” Steve told Bucky as they were working together renovating a house.  
A lot of habitations had crumbled down during the past five years and now that the people who had disappeared with Thanos's snap were back, most of them had found themselves homeless or living in houses and flats which were lacking electricity or water or were simply on the verge of collapsing. Bucky and Steve had immediately volunteered to help rebuild. Afterall, they had nothing better to do until Tony's funeral.  
Steve's muscles moving in his arms and beneath his white tank top was a sight for sore eyes and Bucky was mesmerised by his friend's body, that might be why he did not understand what Steve was talking about.  
“I saw Peggy when I went back in time to retrieve the Tesseract. I know where and when to find her,” Steve elaborated.  
Bucky's heart broke. “You're leaving me!” he accused his friend. “That's why you volunteered to bring back each stone where and when it belongs! You're not planning on coming back!”  
“I promised her a dance, and I always keep my promises, you know that Buck. After that, well, it'll depend on her... If she'll have me or not...”  
Bucky was dumbstruck, he let his tools fall down, then joined them by sitting on the plaster covered floor.  
“Are you okay buddy?” Steve asked him, kneeling to be on his level.  
“No I'm not!” Bucky answered a little harsher than he'd meant to. “For seven decades I've been a prisoner of our enemies, worse, I've been brainwashed and used by them as a weapon to do evil. Now I live in a strange world, eaten alive by guilt and knowing that you're here too is the only thing that allows me to keep going.”  
“I'm sorry Buck, but you'll be fine. You should go and talk to Sam. He's really good at helping people with PTSD. He helped me a lot,” Steve tried to cheer him up. He did not understand that Bucky needed him in a different way.  
He felt petty but he did not want Steve to leave. “Why are you leaving? Really? Do I disgust you? Are you fleeing from me because of all the bad things I've done?”  
“They made you do those horrible things! You're not responsible. I'm not leaving because of you. The only thing I know is that if I don't come back, well, I'll miss you... I'll miss you more than anything or anyone here. But I'm tired of all this. I fought my wars, now I just want a normal life, with a home of my own, a family, perhaps a dog and a simple job like this one, breaking and building things.”  
Steve was breaking things alright. He was breaking Bucky's soul. “Couldn't you find those things here?” he asked, trying once more to convince him to stay.  
“Peggy's the only woman who ever made me feel this way. And we have unfinished business she and I.”  
Bucky was crushed. Steve had made his mind. He knew he should feel happy for his best friend, that he had the opportunity to go back to the woman he loved and that he would have the life he deserved. But instead, Bucky was devastated because the love of his own life was leaving him for someone else and somewhere he could not follow.  
“You're going to be fine Bucky,” Steve was trying to reassure him. “Sam, T'Challa, Bruce, they'll look out for you. They'll help you fight your demons. Be strong for me please Buck. Be brave. You've suffered enough, let this new life bring you the peace of mind and happiness you deserve.”  
However, it seemed that he did not deserve happiness because the only thing he wanted and needed to be happy was leaving him. Bucky felt empty.  
“I'm sorry my decision makes you feel this way,” Steve apologized when Bucky wouldn't cheer up. “ Let's call it a day and go to Sam. You're in no condition to keep working here.”


	2. Bucky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first month, Bucky had lived like a robot. He breathed, he ate, he worked and he slept, but he repressed all his feelings. Sam did not let him down and he pushed him out of this numb state. Bucky was still broken but at least he had reconnected with the world of the living. Sam was all patience and slowly worked with him to heal the trauma of his life as the Winter Soldier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I already have written a few chapters, but will only post a new one each time I manage to write one more and although my chapters are pretty short, I'm afraid I'm a slow writer...

Bucky had tried to be brave. He had not broken down again the following days. He told himself that this was punishment for his evil deeds as the Winter Soldier and faced his punishment because he deserved it.  
After Tony's funeral he made his farewell with Steve. He even tried a feeble joke by reenacting their goodbye when he left for the front eighty odd years ago. But it was only a façade, because inside he felt dead. He did not even hope that Peggy would be married already and that Steve would somehow come back to him.  
Bucky was a shell. He kept on breathing because Steve had told him to go on with his life and Steve had still such a strong influence over him.  
But then Steve had left and the five seconds had passed and he did not come back and everybody was looking for him, wondering what had gone wrong. Bucky knew and he broke down into tears. Sam went to him and somehow managed to soothe him down enough for him to be able to tell them what had happened.  
Steve's friends were relieved but Bucky's world was still dead. He felt abandoned like a puppy in a cardboard box on the sidewalk. Steve had left a metaphorical sign in this metaphorical box, asking that whomever adopted him should take good care of him and Sam, Bruce and T'Challa did. But abandoning a puppy was cruel even if you left a note with it, even if the pup found a nice family...  
The first month, Bucky had lived like a robot. He breathed, he ate, he worked and he slept, but he repressed all his feelings. Sam did not let him down and he pushed him out of this numb state. Bucky was still broken but at least he had reconnected with the world of the living. Sam was all patience and slowly worked with him to heal the trauma of his life as the Winter Soldier.  
Guilt never left Bucky but with time, his mind started to accept that he was a victim more than a villain.  
Sam was happy with his progress. Bucky was happy not to feel like a zombie anymore, but he was still heartbroken.  
Bucky knew that in this new world homosexuality wasn't a taboo anymore, that most people were accepting it, that two men or two women could even get married and adopt children. Bucky, however, only felt safe confessing his feelings for Steve to Sam when he introduced him to friends of his who were in a homosexual relationship. That was about six months after Steve's departure.  
Sam brought him to places where he could meet people like him and he tried to set him up with some of his single gay acquaintances, he even installed an app called Grindr on his smartphone, but Bucky's heart wasn't in it. Bucky did not want to forget Steve.  
After a whole year had passed since the Blip, Bucky was still pining after Steve, still hopelessly in love with him and still not moving on and Sam didn't know what to do anymore to help him.  
That was the state of mind they were in when they attended the party organized by Pepper in the honor of her late husband's sacrifice to save the universe from Thanos.  
“Tony loved life,” she announced at the beginning of the ceremony, “and he loved to party. So be merry, drink, dance, laugh. Remember him fondly but don't be sad. He would not want you to be sad. Have fun!” And the guests obliged.  
Bucky did not have fun, did not dance and did not laugh, but drink, he did. So did Sam and the others. The problem was that Sam and the others got chatty. It started with Bruce bugging him to know why he kept the somber face when they had been expressly told to have fun. Then Sam told him everything and he wasn't discreet because Scott Lang heard the whole story too.  
“The thing is, you know, he can't move on because he never told Steve how he felt. He hasn't been clearly rejected – or not rejected. And now you can't move on to someone new!” Sam said drunkenly, pointing an accusing finger towards Bucky.  
Said Bucky was wasted, Pepper had managed to get a keg of Asgardian mead at the party and he had drunk a fair share of the stuff. Actually he got so wasted on it that he could not react to what the others were saying, not even with anger.  
“He could still do,” said Scott, “I mean, tell Steve how he feels.”  
“I tried to find him,” Sam explained. “But the old bastard's either dead or very well hidden...”  
“No, I meant go back to the past. If he's lucky, the old bastard returns his feelings and they can come back to now and live happily ever after. If not, he'll be able to finally move on!”  
Alcohol worked strange miracles because Bruce and Sam agreed with Scott's idea. Bucky was too dazed with alcohol to oppose the plan.  
“And we have everything we need here and now to get you there!” Bruce exclaimed. “Let's go!”  
Just like highschool boys preparing a prank during prom night, the four of them fled from the party to roam the hallways of Pepper's new compound to look for what they needed to get Bucky back to Steve. Well the three of them acted like highschool boys, Bucky was more acting like an intoxicated zombie.  
Once they got into the time machine room, Bruce and Scott busied themselves programming it while Sam got Bucky into the suit and told him what to do: “Once you're there, you find Steve and you tell him how you feel. It's very important. Don't come back until you've told him. It's the only way you can get better!”  
“I'll never get better,” slurred Bucky. “But it'll be nice to see him again.” He was slightly coming back to himself, but not enough to prevent them from sending him into the past.  
“Take this,” Scott instructed him while putting a tiny bundle inside his hand. “It's a suit for Steve if he decides to come back. We programmed it to come back to here and now, just like yours. Now go!” and he pushed him onto the platform. Bruce started the countdown, and Bucky landed in the past.  
And then he puked his guts out.  
He felt really, really bad.  
He did not recognize the place, it was the middle of the night in a big city. He stumbled down towards a pile of dumpsters, collapsed and passed out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 🎵 A song to listen to?  
> Grenade by Bruno Mars  
> https://youtu.be/SR6iYWJxHqs


	3. Bucky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky's quest for Steve begins

Bucky woke up a few hours later when the dumpster truck came to collect the garbage. He was both; half drunk still but also already half hungover, but as he looked around, his well trained brain was quick to assert the situation. According to the cars driving in the street, he was indeed in the seventies, he was still wearing the time-travell suit on top of his tuxedo, he had managed not to faint or roll on his own vomit and he had no money. He briefly considered going back to Pepper's party. However, as much as he knew that it was wrong, that he could alter the future with any inconspicuous mistake, to hell with the consequences, if there was a chance to at least have a glimpse of Steve, he wanted to take it. Steve had risked it and so would he. He wasn't so sure about the all “confess your feelings” part of the mission, but if he could at least get a glance of Steve, he would at least feel a little better, so he took off his time travel suit, shrunk it, put it with the other one in his tux's pocket and started walking.  
He was angry, this whole situation was a mess, he was wearing an expensive twenty-first century tuxedo, had no money in his pockets and his hungover was taking over his drunkenness more and more, nevertheless as the Winter Soldier, he had accomplished harder missions than this one with less, and at least this time he didn't have to kill anyone.  
He kept his eyes wide open for anything that could be helpful. Eventually, he found out that he was in Newark, state of New Jersey, he had found a few quarters lost here and there on the sidewalk. Not many but enough for a much needed coffee. At a newspaper stall he found out the date and it was exactly a year and a day after Steve was supposed to put back the Tesseract in its rightful place. He knew he shouldn't have trusted those drunkards, but that Asgardian mead had been something and he had been more drunk than Sam and the others. Damn! Had he ever been that drunk in his whole life? The hungover that came along with it was pretty bad too, his head was hurting and his stomach felt queasy.   
He emptied his cup of coffee and focused on the next step, finding a change of clothes. He had already found an old backpack that had been discarded in a trash can. He sneaked into a homeless shelter without being seen and found exactly what he needed, that is to say, a bunch of donated clothes. They had seen better days, but they would be better than his tux. There was a pair of ripped jeans that fit him, a denim jacket that was a little too big for him but which would help to conceal his metal arm, and he chose a purple tie and die t-shirt so he would look like a harmless hippy. He felt a little bad for the theft, but those clothes were for the homeless and at the moment he was, and penniless as well... Anyway, he didn't plan on staying a long time and he would bring them back before leaving. Once he was changed and that his tux was safely stored into the backpack, he went off to search for Peggy.  
Bucky was great at two things, surviving and being a ghost. Exactly what he needed in order to do what he had to without altering the timeline. At least he hoped he would not...  
He also knew where Peggy worked and therefore knew where to start his search. He had tried no to pry on her life, but had still found out - thanks to the others - that in the seventies she was a widow and mother to two College age children.   
The easiest way to find her would be to drive to her work place, wait for her to go home and follow her, but, that would imply having a car at his disposal, which he did not. Therefore he needed to do some research. Finding her place wasn't as easy as opening a phonebook, but a trip to the library gave him access to old newspapers which were always useful.  
He found a few newspaper clips in which Peggy appeared next to Howard Stark, but of course there was no mention of where she lived. By the end of the afternoon, he had found what he was looking for. He found one of Peggy's children's name in a list of pupils having graduated High School. He searched a little further back in time and found the name of her other child having graduated from the same High School, making sure that the first one wasn't a namesake. This was a solid lead, he just had to get to the school, break into it and get Peggy's address from her children's files. Even though they had both finished High School and were in College now, there must still be files on them in the school's archives.  
Bucky had what he needed so he left the library and began searching for both food, to quiet his gurgling stomach, and a way to get closer to the school.  
In the dumpster behind a convenience store, he found a barely molded, plastic wrapped, tuna sandwich. He had eaten worse as the Winter Soldier and his hungover stomach felt a little better after ingesting the food.   
Then he started to walk in the general direction of the school and he hitch hiked. His long hair and the hippy outfit did not stop elderly people, but to the young he looked unthreatening and therefore he did not struggle much to get a ride. The hardest part was that he had to respond to the casual chit chat of his drivers, he wasn't in the mood and the last remnants of the hungover didn't help but he made himself act charming. He did get where he wanted and that was all that mattered.  
It was nightfall when he got there. It was a boarding school and therefore he needed to wait until the dead of the night to get in. It made sense, Bucky knew that by the end of the sixties, Peggy was already a widow and as head of S.H.I.E.L.D., she probably didn't have much time to take care of her children and they would be safer at school than home alone.  
Once he was sure he would neither be disrupted nor disrupt anyone, he stealthily went inside the school, found the administrative office and went to look for Peggy's children's files. The seventies were great for research, everything was still on paper and there was no need to hack stupid computers. Bucky could do it, but it didn't mean that he enjoyed it. He found what he was looking for easily, memorized the address and put everything back where it belonged. He exited the building leaving no trace of his trespassing and went to a nearby park to end his night sleeping on a bench. Going to Peggy would have to wait for daylight.  
In the morning, he roamed the streets again for lost coins and this time he was lucky enough to find what he needed to pay for a coffee and a fresh sandwich. Once he had eaten he went back to his quest for Steve and hitch hiked to the address he had found the previous night.  
He got there in the afternoon. He studied the house, everything was dark and there was no sign of movement inside. Looking for Peggy's place had given Bucky a purpose, something to focus on, but now that he was there, he was feeling nervous. He had found Peggy's place, but had seen no trace of Steve. Was he even there with her? If he was, what would Bucky tell him? There was so much he wanted to tell him, so much he would never dare tell him. His head was a mess, what was he doing here? His head told him he should go back to Sam, but his aching heart wanted to see Steve...  
He was pacing the suburban street not too close to Peggy's house because he had a gut feeling that it had a Stark Industries surveillance system and he did not want to risk disturbing it. At some point, his stomach started to gurgle with hunger and to appease it, he went into someone's vegetable garden and unearthed a couple of carrots. He cleaned them and ate them like that, then waited some more.  
In the early evening, he spotted Peggy inside her car, driving home. He followed her from a safe distance while trying to decide what he was going to tell her.   
Well, since it did not seem like Steve was at her place, he would just go and ask her if she knew how he could find him. If he considered this as a mission, it would be easier for him. He could focus on that instead of his feelings.  
He gave Peggy fifteen minutes, then walked to her front door. There, with his flesh hand, he knocked on it. He heard footsteps coming towards him, a pause, and then, the door opened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter:   
> Cold Heart of the Klondike  
> By Tuomas Holopainen  
> https://youtu.be/FTVg3QpBBR8

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you've liked this and that you want to know what happens next...
> 
> 🎵 And why not listen to "Don't be mean" by Sonata Arctica to prolong the angsty mood a little?  
> https://youtu.be/IFS266jUkV0 (that's the song for chapter 1 but I don't know why this end note always appears at then end of the last chapter published -_-)
> 
> Oh, and I have a Tumblr now, there's not much on it but if you want to give it a look my username is sitatu: http://sitatu.tumblr.com


End file.
